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J.K. Rowling and the lure of anonymity

Harry Potter author said that writing The Cuckoo’s Calling under a pseudonym was “a fantastic experience,” but most writers would kill for a fraction of her fame.

When her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was published in 2012, J.K. Rowling said she didn't use a pseudonym because it would have made her feel "ashamed" of her work. Yet her first mystery novel was published this year under a man's name. (Lefteris Pitarakis / The Associated Press file photo)

The minute I heard last month that the celebrated Harry Potter author had been outed as the author of a mystery novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pseudonym of “first-time author” Robert Galbraith, I shelled out my less than $13 and ordered the ebook version. So what does that make me? A literary lemming? Part of the plot?

In mid-July, the Sunday Times revealed the secret of the world’s most successful novelist after one of her lawyers indiscreetly told a friend over Twitter that Galbraith, purportedly a retired military officer, and Rowling were one and the same.

The novel, even anonymously, got very good reviews back in the spring (“an auspicious debut,” said the Daily Mail; “scintillating” said the Times). It sold a mere 8,500 copies, but did get two television offers. However, once Rowling was named as its author, it shot to the top of the bestseller list, moving more than 700,000 copies.

So I guess that makes me, and other readers who rushed to buy it, an enabler. More fame and fortune for a woman already acknowledged to be the “first billionaire author.”

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Even someone not very cynical could assume the whole thing was a publicity hoax. But Rowling, 48, who is known to be prickly about privacy, subsequently sued her law firm, saying she was “angry and distressed” about having her cover blown. Last week she won a settlement, which included a substantial donation to a soldiers charity.

At a cottage, I inhaled The Cuckoo’s Calling and loved it, although I found the ending a bit too tidy. Still it’s got a supermodel who may or may not have jumped from a window to her death, and an endearing protagonist — former soldier and now private detective Cormoran Strike, who lost half his leg in Afghanistan, is in deep debt and romantic disarray, and is living in his office when he gets the case that will turn his life around.

It’s also got a likable female sidekick, the smart and capable Robin. And it’s got Rowling, a.k.a. Galbraith, pontificating on one of her favourite subjects: the ravages of fame and the dastardly behaviour of those who feed off it — mainly the media. Or, in the words of different characters: “That’s what they do to success: they hunt you down, they tear you down …” and “The press in this country are lower than scum.” There are references to Princess Diana and the Parisian underpass, and to the notorious British phone-hacking scandal.

It’s no secret there is a deep vein of anger or at least of grievance within Rowling about violations of her privacy. She was a complainant at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, where she eloquently argued for her children’s right to privacy, even though as a public figure she has hugely benefited from media exposure.

I found myself puzzling about the whole “Robert Galbraith” thing. Why be a male author? She had, in fact, already tried that on by using the gender-neutral initials J.K. as the author of the Harry Potter series, allegedly because her publishers were anxious to ensnare boy readers.

A champion of struggling single mothers everywhere, which is what she was when she wrote her first Potter book, Rowling might have used the “anonymous” moment to strike a blow for women writers, especially when the deft writing in Cuckoo makes it hard to tell which gender authored it. As Rowling said subsequently, she was proud she had “successfully channelled my inner bloke.”

Why be anonymous at all? When her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was published in 2012 amid sky-high expectations — not to mention critics eager to take her down — the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi asked Rowling during an interview if she had considered using a pseudonym for her first non-Potter book. She said no, because she “would feel as though I were ashamed” of the work.

But I guess if you are J.K. Rowling, you do as many other serious writers have done, and go with a pseudonym for your mystery novel for the sheer fun of it, and for the chance to be reviewed as a nonentity instead of a woman who wields, as one U.K. survey discovered, more influence than the Queen.

On the “Robert Galbraith” website, the outed Rowling now muses that being anonymous was “a fantastic experience and I only wish it could have gone on a little longer.”

Tell that to all the struggling authors out there, toiling under their own names, who would give their eye teeth not to be quite so “anonymous.”

But who ever said the literary life was fair?

Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson

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